LAST SPRING AS NOTRE DAME BURNED

last Spring as Notre Dame burned
I felt the world coming apart in my hands
as if it were a pomegranate bursting with stars
and this was its stain in space and a garnet Infinity
where so much beauty rose released into Heaven
and angels were seen walking along the Seine
walking along the Seine and saying their beads
with a terrible concentration and no gestures at all
and fisher folk putting out to sea all the changelings
when the Floods dreamed inland to douse
our souls
is this a sign or can it be told and time time
to leave the Museum of sighs
facing forward launched into an unknown
so vast where Beauty cries out to be saved.Alas


When Notre Dame burned and I felt the spire of
words crumple inside me and the shards of
such colours never again to be seen on earth
by little children turning their kaleidoscopes
at Easter
and histories weeping inwardly and the book of
Life opening suddenly on the snows on no lilac page
then Spring itself stepped back Eurydice
taken into the plum darkness or Persephone,
all myths being clouded over now
where there are rivers of an immense sadness
and the poets wind down to no avail and perpetually
turning to stone the moon to dazed pearl
as in Plutonian realms
where the dream walls are shattered with the antiphons
where the ice cannot glaze the leaf
and I am not the self I was before this grief
under the luxuriant shadows of the great cathedrals
where the almond trees chimed
and God collecting up all our tears
in crystal bottles.
and the Sun going backwards
in full throttle.


in golden adieus to the little children..

mary angela douglas 18 april 2020;16 may 2020;rev. 23 march 2021